Event Time
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Noon to 1:15 PM
Open to the Yale community and invited scholars.
Location
Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Room A002
77 Prospect Street
New Haven, CT 06511
Speaker
Hye Young You, Associate Professor of Politics and Public and International Affairs, Princeton University
Description
American Poltics & Public Policy Workshop
Abstract
A common concern is that lobbying by interest groups distorts democratic representation by shifting legislators away from their constituents’ preferences. For lobbying to harm legislative responsiveness, the preferences of interest groups must diverge from those of the constituents of the legislators they lobby. We analyze the ideological alignment between interest groups, members of Congress, and their constituents across four policy areas: the environment, healthcare, immigration, and trade. Using issue-specific measures of district opinion and campaign contributions as a proxy for lobbying contacts, we find that legislators representing more conservative districts are more likely to be lobbied by conservative groups, suggesting that lobbying often reinforces, rather than distorts, representational alignment. We then estimate a structural model of roll-call voting that incorporates lobbying. The estimated effects are modest but show that lobbying nudges legislators to vote more consistently with district opinion. Lobbying does not systematically distort legislative responsiveness.
Biography
Hye Young You holds a joint appointment in the Department of Politics and the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.
Her primary research focuses on how interest groups influence democratic representation in the United States. By focusing on the role of interest group lobbying in American politics, her research examines the specific mechanisms and strategies that interest groups use to lobby and sheds light on groups that play a crucial role, but have been understudied, in policymaking. She also studies how politicians are informed and how interest groups can control the provision of information to policymakers. In addition to her core research agenda on lobbying, she is interested in federalism and local political economy, focusing on how local government finances affect the provision of local public goods and intergovernmental relations. Her research has appeared in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, and other outlets. Professor You’s work has been recognized by five discipline-wide Best Paper awards from the American Political Science Association.
Hye Young You received her B.A. at Seoul National University in South Korea, her M.A. at The University of Chicago, and her Ph.D. at Harvard University.